Email Marketing New Rules
of Engagement for 2008
By Ross Kramer, CEO
February 5, 2008
One of my favorite things about email marketing is the availability and immediacy of the metrics and analytics that allow marketers to monitor and measure the success of their specific broadcasts, campaigns, and even entire email programs. These metrics allow marketers to promptly and cost effectively tweak and test new strategies for their email programs based on what is working and what isn’t. When something isn’t working as effectively as in the past, marketers know it’s time to make changes.
Likewise, these same metrics, trends, and analytics are helping our industry establish overarching practices that email marketers can adopt. Many “best practices” were established in email marketing’s early days to help senders understand how to optimize this brand new medium in their communication efforts, and over time these practices became fairly standard and widely used. Because this industry and this medium are dynamic and still evolving, it is no surprise that new best practices should emerge as well. When something is no longer working as effectively as in the past, folks, it’s time to make changes.
Now, with the availability of more advanced measuring and monitoring tools, married with efforts for standardization from sender groups, ESPs, and ISPs, newer and better data is suggesting that some of the rules and best practices may be changing, and that’s a good thing. Here is a short list of a few considerations for change and new rules for email marketers for 2008:
- Relevancy trumps frequency. In the past, marketers were warned not to email their list too frequently as this could lead to unsubscribes or complaints. In fact, many marketers told subscribers upon sign up exactly how often to expect to hear from them in order to set an expectation. Subscriber feedback tells us that they don’t want to unsubscribe from your lists based on high frequency of communications, but instead based on the fact that the communications were not relevant to them. When marketers use advanced tools, such as event triggering and dynamic content, to keep the content relevant and personalized to the individual subscriber, frequency no longer becomes an issue. As long as the content is relevant and desired by the subscriber, marketers may mail more frequently than what was considered acceptable in the past.
- List Size: Bigger isn’t always better. In the past, email marketing was seen as a bit of a numbers game. Knowing that you were certain to have a number of bounces, non-opens, and non-reads per campaign, logic told us to acquire bigger lists in order to have bigger results. However, this tactic has actually proved to be detrimental in most cases. Bigger list of non-qualified names is never going to perform better in your email campaigns over time than a solid list of qualified, permission-based targeted subscribers who desire to be engaged in your communications, and continue to be engaged in your communications. Marketers should avoid looking for ways to acquire more and more email addresses to their list, and instead should adopt lead generation practices and list management tactics that better help them reach and qualify their desired audience of subscribers.
- Subscription Forms: Active is Better than Passive. In the past, to ensure necessary permission was captured from a prospective subscriber submitting their email address, email marketers used subscription forms with automatic default check boxes to add the email address to one or more subscription lists. Whereas this may have helped to grow the list and maintain basic regulation compliance, it ultimately lead to unscubscribes and even complaints as these subscribers weren’t as qualified as those who actively request the email communication by checking the form box themselves. New best practices suggest that active subscription, meaning letting your prospect check the box(es) themselves, is better for the long term health of your subscription list and your reputation as an email sender.
- Reputation Matters. Over the past few years, reputation has become somewhat of a buzz word in the email marketing arena. Many marketers don’t fully understand how the reputation of a sender is monitored by the ISPs and by business to which they send. Nor do most fully understand how reputation can affect—negatively and positively—their email marketing efforts, specifically delivery. Some marketers believed that following best practices was enough to establish a reputation. Today it is imperative for marketers to closely watch their delivery metrics, acquire tools that help them to monitor inbox vs. bulk box delivery, establish feedback loops with the major ISPS, and use authentication and verification tools. Many times working with a reputable Email Service Provider (ESP) instead of mailing in-house, marketers can leverage the technology and reputation already established by that ESP to improve and remedy delivery and reputation problems.
- Don’t be afraid to Re-Engage. In managing subscription lists, it is a good idea to look at subscribers who have not taken any responsive action over a period of time or specific number of sends. Are these subscribers still interested in your emails? Are these subscribers annoyed by your emails and simply deleting your messages when they arrive in the inbox? Hard to say. In the past, the mindset might have been to let sleeping dogs lie. If they didn’t unsubscribe or complain, those inactive subscribers were still fair game on your list, and maybe just maybe someday they would read, open, click, or buy. Today, the mindset is shifting a bit. By sending a re-engage or re-subscribe notice to inactive subscribers, you can ask for information from your subscriber and find out specifically if your messages are meaningful to them or not. If not, you run the risk of having them unsubscribe, but wasn’t that going to happen eventually anyway if they remained unengaged? If they elect to remain subscribed, you likely have gained more qualifying information about them and can now send meaningful and relevant messages to capture their response.
As email marketing matures, metrics continue to tell the story. Good email marketing programs don’t just happen; they are cultivated by the email marketers who keep abreast of what is working in our industry and what is not, and by those who are not afraid to make the changes necessary to test these new waters in their own programs. I am confident that 2008 brings a new tide for email marketing. As campaigns become more relevant, delivery becomes more strategically managed, and subscription lists become focused on quality not quantity, email marketers will surely continue to see growing response and success rates in their email programs.
About the Author
Ross Kramer is a founder of Listrak. A serial entrepreneur by nature, Ross has started several marketing technology ventures, the first of which was a web hosting company in his Penn State dorm room. Today Ross serves as the President and CEO for two leading technology companies; Listrak and Vertex Internet.
About Listrak
Listrak is a leading provider of hosted email marketing software, allowing permission-based marketers to manage, send, track and grow their email marketing investment. We deliver email marketing intelligence through our intuitive web-based application. Leading marketers have come to rely on this intelligence to better manage email in their multi-channel marketing mix.
Listrak software helps companies, agencies and associations better manage customer relations in their marketing campaigns. Its web-enabled interface helps marketers engage their customers using an advanced profiling and personalization engine. Listrak’s world-class support and professional services assist clients with enterprise integration. Its clients include L’Oreal, Motorola, Jeep, PR Newswire, The Islands of the Bahamas, and the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
To learn more about the many ways Listrak can strengthen your email marketing campaigns, or to sign up for a 20-minute web-based tour, visit www.listrak.com.
